Well, of course it does. Just ask Jeanette Boswell of Stockton, California:

STOCKTON - An 11-year-old boy and his foster mother are mad about unwittingly buying a comic book they consider racist.

Joey Boswell received three comic books, Hershey's kisses, candy canes and M&M's in his stocking on Christmas Day. One of those comics, titled "Captain Confederacy," is set in a world in which the South won the Civil War and the Confederacy is a world power.

"I saw the first couple pages, and I was mad," Joey said. "I was wondering, why is (my mom) getting something like this?"

Captain Confederacy's superheroes are a blond-haired, blue-eyed muscle man wearing a red shirt with the crisscrossed logo of the Confederate flag and a Black female fighter, among others. The text contains derogatory references to Blacks.

"Just stocking stuffers. Or so I thought," said Jeanette Boswell, Joey's foster mother...

The comic book was written by Will Shetterly and originally published by SteelDragon Press in 1986. Epic - a label owned by Marvel - published a handful of issues in 1991...

"I'd actually like to see whoever is writing this to stop putting out this offensive material," Boswell, 55, said. "The way they're doing this, it can really warp some young minds."

Now, before you recoil in horror, thinking that some nutcase klansman has managed to get racist propaganda published in a kids' comic book, read on. This isn't as cut and dry as you might think:

First of all, according to Blair Whipple, Captain Confederacy is not a racist comic book:

This book operates on an alternate reality. What if the South had won the American Civil War? In this series, they did. Slavery was abolished sometime after their victory and before present-day. The United States and the Confederacy were two separate countries. In the 1980s, the South had its own government-appointed superhero in Captain Confederacy... It was a play on Marvel's popular Captain America character... This book has absolutely nothing to do with racial discrimination or anything like that, just so you don't get the wrong idea. It simply follows an interesting premise. Definitely interesting, plus he's got a cool costume! Give it a look!

The emphasis above (and below) was added by me.

W. Scott Poole explains a little more about the premise of the comic book:

Captain Confederacy is set in alternative universe in which the South won the Civil War and North America has continued to splinter since the 19th century into political entities like Deseret, Pacifica, and the Peoples Republic of California (ha!). The Confederate States of America (CSA) has become a world power...

What about the roles of women and blacks in this alternate Southern universe?

Meanwhile, the nations of this alternate world each have their own super soldier, a la Captain America. Captain Confederacy, super soldier of the Confederate states, happens to be, in the modern era, an African American woman named Kate Williams. Dealing with the outcome, even an imaginary outcome, to the American civil war, forced comics writers to deal with issue of race and the place of African Americans in a world where the armies of Robert E. Lee had triumphed.

But, wait, wait, wait! According to the Boswells, the text of the comic book contained derogatory references to blacks! Right? Well, turns out, there's more to that aspect, too:

Not only does an African American female superhero (pregnant at the beginning of the series) represent the CSA, the southern republic also has a female President ... Meanwhile, a few diehard southerners are shown resenting the changes that have come to the CSA. These "White Knights" as they are called, are totally marginal in the modern CSA. Small groups of them are often seen protesting pathetically at airports and other public places.

So in the imaginary south of Captain Confederacy, racists are presented as a pathetic, marginalized group... laughed at or simply ignored by those who know better. Hmmmmmm....

Kinda sounds like the real south in 2006.

Not that anyone in Stockton, California would believe that. Heck, they even presuppose a kind of powerful white racism in the imaginary south of comic books. I'd love to know what ideas they have about the real south.

On second thought, I really don't want to know.